Posts tagged “2K Marin”

XCOM's 2013 squad-based shooter spin-off The Bureau: XCOM Declassified is available free for the next day-and-a-bit from the Humble Store. Our Alec will tell you it's one of those enjoyable-enough 7/10 perfectly average action games, which makes it not bad as a freebie. Me, my interests are slightly more morbid: I want to see the game which changed form wildly as its development dragged on…

BioShock: The Collection is the deeply uninspiring name for a bundle of all the previous BioShock games that for some reason 2K are still refusing to acknowledge. It's now been rated by bodies around the world, including the ESRB, and yet 2K still remain schtum. Which is weird. Anyway, it'll contain all three games, and in case you've forgotten, "Cutscenes also depict intense acts of…

With Irrational 20,000 leagues under and Ken Levine off doing his own, significantly smaller thing at 2K, you might think BioShock dead in the water. You would, however, be wrong. Following on from Levine's original comment that he was leaving the series in 2K's hands, Take-Two Big Daddy Strauss Zelnick has confirmed at a recent analyst conference that the oft-divisive series will carry on and once-thought-dead…

Oh boy. It is officially another One Of Those Days. The diabolical layoff stampede beast of certain doom has struck again, this time allegedly laying waste to the whole of The Bureau: XCOM Declassified and BioShock 2 developer 2K Marin. For now, 2K is only officially saying that there have been "staff reductions" at the oft-beleaguered studio, but sources close to the situation told RPS…

Eldritch just got announced by former BioShock 2/Borderlands developers David and Kyle Pittman, but it's already rocketed to the top of my list of Exciting Doodads That I Will (Lovingly) Obliterate With My Excitement Lasers. The headline does not lie. The roguelike-like counts games like Thief and Dishonored among its closest inspirations, bringing them together in a clammy, tentacle-slathered Lovecraftian embrace. In short, you can…

It’d be a relief to spend a few days of gaming in the company of dapper sixties agents rather than gruff space marines. Sadly, the heroes of The Bureau, dress code aside, are space marines. They shoot monsters, then roll between carefully placed cover and magically summon turrets. There are tactics to be found, but are they in sufficient quantity to make the rest of…

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I actually think the original concept for what eventually went on to become The Bureau: XCOM Declassified would've made for a pretty cool game... if it wasn't called XCOM. 1960s X-Files? A story that lures players into its irresistible green glow with both unrelenting mystery and the social/political tensions of the time? I would've played that. Don't get…

I just read Adam's thoughts on the previous footage of The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, and I can see why he was grumpy. His video was from earlier on in the game, whereas Revision3's runthrough is from bit later on, but his points stand: the moment-to-moment shooting doesn't seem nearly as interesting as the command system that tosses the rest of the squad into battle, and…

He might not have quite the profile of a Levine or Smith, but as a lead designer on Thief 3, particularly of The Cradle level, not to mention the similarly nerve-torturing Fort Frolic map in BioShock, Jordan Thomas is a name just as worth knowing. While being granted more overreaching control of a project resulted in 2K Marin's smart, improved but too safe sequel BioShock…

Two things to note in regards to this latest The Bureau: XCOM Declassified video. Actually, make that three things because it's worth mentioning that the name becomes worse every time I have to type it. It's not the worst use of a colon this side of an alien probing session, but it is a tad cumbersome. I'm also increasingly wary of the stop-start nature of…

I love XCOM, X-COM and pretty much any variant thereof. Heck, I'd probably buy X-MOC, a spoof version in which the invading aliens are broad parodies of Z-list celebrities, provided the combat was turn-based and the deaths were permanent. The idea of an alien invasion in a period setting that permits excessive use of fedoras and chain-smoking agents is also pleasing to my aesthetic sensibilities,…

I'm really sorry about this. I'm about to ruin XCOM for you. Are you ready? To the tune of Sex Bomb, by Tom Jones: XCOM, XCOM, you're my XCOM And baby you can turn me on There, now you can all share in the pain. I've had that in my head for the past half-hour, after watching VG247's sneakily snuck video of The Bureau: XCOM…

It's alive! The name change from XCOM: Mad Men Edition to The Bureau had been anticipated for some time, but we weren't entirely clear as to whether the former first-person reboot would retain any trappings of its original title. Moments ago, a video and press release revealed that 2K Marin, they of Bioshock 2, are indeed working on the game and that it will be…

Whatever happened to the other XCOM, the 2K Marin-made shooter which was revealed long before last year's XCOM: Enemy Unknown made everyone, except you, happy? It's a question we've already asked several times here. We ask it because we don't know the answer, and unless anyone involved feels like getting their Talpidae on and sneaking us some info, we won't know until 2K reveal all.…

Quietly - ever so quietly - XCOM: The Game Of The Other, Very Different Game has poofed into Duke-Nukem-scented vapors. It's touched down and carved crop circles into the fields of our imaginations a couple times, but not without 2K Marin knocking it out of its bicycle basket and dragging it back into the deepest reaches of some underground testing facility. Matters, I imagine, were…

Still filled up with indignant energy and ready to type "This is not my X-Com!" in response to whatever comes out of 2K? Then you are in luck, because there's a brand new video about the development of the squad-based UFO-shooter, with a couple of guys from 2K Marin explaining what they are up to. Watch it below! Jonathan Pelling, the project lead, says: “It’s…

2K Games have released the full twenty minutes of the XCOM E3 2011 demo, with the developers narrating what is going on. It explains some of the background and story, shows off the underground base, the agent selection process, the mission selection, the squad combat, and elements of the problem solving involved in the "battlescape" the game sets up. This is the most detail we've…

We've seen XCOM. Want to know what it's truly all about? Read on below for the best XCOM preview on this or any other internet. Really, it's got Giant Doom Lasers Of Doom, a bit about that squad-management stuff, reports on alien super-powers, themes of 1960s political incorrectness, correct art-history references, and everything else it could possibly need. Go have a read.

Recently we had a chance to look at 2K's intriguing reboot of XCOM - and a full XCOM preview is coming up soon - but first there's an interview which explains a bit about the world, and the intention to tell a story about the origin of the XCOM alien invasion in the setting of 1960s America. In the depths of a bunker packed with…

The BioShock 2 Protector Trials DLC arrives on PC today, adding a new challenge mode and six arenas to 2K's inarguably moist epic. A mere seven and a half months late, too! That said, we're getting it for free, and having had a read of Christian Donlan's Eurogamer review this sounds to me like neat enough stuff. Take a look at some in-game footage below,…